1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to silicone resin compositions for light-emitting diode (LED) devices, and more particularly to silicone resin compositions for the protection, bonding, wavelength alteration or adjustment, and lens formation in LED devices. The invention also relates to LED devices encapsulated with a cured product of the silicon resin composition.
2. Background Art
In the prior art, epoxy resins are often used as the sealing material for LED devices. With respect to silicone resins, JP-A 10-228249 discloses the use as mounting members, JP-A 10-242513 corresponding to U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,998,925, 6,614,179, 6,069,440 and 6,608,332 discloses the use as lenses, and JP-A 2000-123981 attempts to use silicone resins as wavelength adjusting coatings. Few silicone resins are actually used in such applications.
While a great focus is being directed to white LED, new problems emerge like UV-induced yellowing of epoxy resin encapsulants during actual use, which has been negligible, and cracking of encapsulants by heat generation increased as a result of size reduction. It is urgently needed to overcome these problems.